Official: Gitmo Uighurs reluctant to move to Palau

TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, The Associated Press

A group of Guantanamo detainees expected to be resettled in Palau may not want to move to the remote Pacific nation, a Palauan official said Wednesday.

Last weekend, Palau sent a fact-finding team to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to meet with the 13 Uighurs – Turkic Muslims from China's far western Xinjiang region – and assess their needs.

The Uighurs appear reluctant to temporarily resettle in Palau, said Joshua Koshiba, who leads a committee on U.S.-Palau relations. He has been in contact with the team since their trip.

Possibly only one Uighur wants to move to Palau, he said, without providing details of the discussions.

"You and me, we thought this was between the U.S. and Palau," Koshiba said. "But they have their own lawyers, and they have rights."

Koshiba leads a committee negotiating the ongoing Compact of Free Association between the U.S. and Palau.

The four-member fact-finding team, sent by the committee, had initially traveled to Washington as part of talks to renew that agreement, which governs U.S.-Palau relations. They detoured to Cuba after Palau agreed last week to President Barack Obama's request to take the men as part of plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

The government will hold a public meeting on the team's findings within the next week, Koshiba said.

Attorney George Clarke, who represents two of the Uighurs, met the Palauan delegation with his clients. He said it is unclear what choice they have in the relocation but disagreed that they are adverse to the tiny archipelago.

Dawut Abdurehim and Anwar Assan, both 34, are "very open" to the idea and asked for more information regarding their future legal status and living arrangements, said Clarke, based in Washington, D.C.

Palau's outpouring of hospitality "means a great deal," he said by telephone.

The Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs) were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. The Pentagon determined last year that they were not "enemy combatants," but the men have been stuck in legal limbo since then.

Sending them back to China was not an option because of U.S. concerns that Chinese authorities, who consider them separatists, would immediately arrest the men.

The United States asked Palau for help after other countries turned it down. Four other Uighurs left Guantanamo Bay last week for a new home in Bermuda.

Palauan President Johnson Toribiong has described the decision to accept the Uighurs as a humanitarian gesture and repeatedly denied that it was tied to any financial compensation.

Some local residents have expressed concerns about their own safety and criticized authorities for not consulting the public.

Clarke said he wants Palauans to know that his clients represent no threat to Palau, the U.S. or anywhere else.

"They're nice, friendly, modest people," he said.

Palau is among the world's smallest countries, with some 20,000 people scattered across 190 square miles (490 square kilometers) of lush tropical landscapes.